


talk too much

by crookedsaint



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, Inherent Romance Of Just Two Guys, M/M, Tillman Henderson (is dead), guys bein dudes, new from the writer of shutout: what happened while they were writing shutout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29008083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedsaint/pseuds/crookedsaint
Summary: Just some guys being dudes. On Declan's bed. Writing song lyrics about his dead ex-boyfriend. Ignoring the ache in their respective chests. Like bros do.
Relationships: Mike Townsend/Declan Suzanne
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	talk too much

**Author's Note:**

> this fic inspired heavily by ohyou_know's fic [ sometimes (your boyfriend, who's not your boyfriend)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27969965/chapters/68504978)! i love it very very much and it gave me even more mikelan brainworms than i already had
> 
> title is from talk too much by coin, which is, i admit, a little on the nose. enjoy!

Mike’s weight was heavier draped across his shoulders than it ever seemed on the field. Declan had never really thought about it at length. Well, that was partially a lie. He’d thought about it at some point. But a guy was owed a  _ few _ moments of staring at the opposing team’s batter from the outfield while wondering what it’d be like to carry him out of a burning building, right? You’re probably granted an allowance for that kind of thing, as a firefighter.

Nevertheless, he was thinking about it now. Despite Mike respectfully keeping his hands off of Declan’s while he tried to navigate the guitar’s arcane workings, it made it damn hard to focus on songwriting. And the  _ length  _ of that thought only stretched on and on as he continued to search for a better ending to the bridge.

“I can’t just repeat it, can I?”

Mike paused. “i mean, why not? most abbla songs are just the same song twice, vamp chorus to fadeout. it’s tried and true, or something.”

Declan leaned over the guitar to fetch the notebook. He’d tossed it across the bed earlier in a moment of characteristically severe patheticism. “I didn’t know ABBLA had a vampire in it. Is that what the L stands for? Lestat, or something?”

There was another pause. This time, though, he could feel Mike’s ribs twitch against his back. 

“Why are you laughing?”

“nothing. just—” Mike reached around him, wrapping his arms over Declan’s chest and making it hard to write much of anything. “you’re either more of a moron than i thought, or that was the funniest joke i have ever heard you make.”

“Really?”

“the bar’s pretty low, dude. don’t get too full of yourself.” The blow would have hit harder if Mike hadn’t punctuated it with a brief, stubble-scratchy kiss to the base of his neck.

Declan paused. Collected himself. Paused a little longer. This was—I mean, how much more tasteless could you get? The two of them were sitting on Declan’s bed, still half-tipsy from the overpriced but weirdly delicious beer at the venue, and that  _ was  _ his usual modus operandi, sure. But this was a song about Declan’s ex coming back to  _ literally _ haunt him. That put tonight in solidly platonic territory, regardless of any other nights be—

“you okay?”

Too long, Suzanne. “Fine. Great. I’m actually—I don’t know if I have anything else to say. With all this.”

“nice!”

“Nice?”

He could feel the sound Mike made—a quiet, agreeable hum—reverberate through his ribcage. “maybe it worked. maybe you’re getting over him!”

Declan scoffed. “Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on your part.”

He hadn’t noticed the rise and fall of Mike’s chest against him until he missed it.

Great job, Suzanne. As the silence stretched on, Mike seemed to grow increasingly uncomfortable. Sure, he didn’t move or get up, but Declan could tell there was something off. Good on you, Suzanne! Great play! You were finally getting somewhere with not pushing your luck with people you liked and fucking everything up. Too bad you’ve never met a winning streak you couldn’t break.

“Mike?” He cleared his throat. 

No response.

“Sorry. Listen, uh. How about we pretend we didn’t say that. I can put the guitar away, and we’ll get up, and I can walk you back to your hotel. Or the airport. Or wherever you want to go, and I have a car, so it’s not like anywhere is too far—I mean, I owe you a little  _ courtesy _ cause that was fucking rude—or, not rude, but, uh. Well. You know what I mean, right? Just say the word and I can—”

“i think i do.” Mike chuckled. “not that you’re saying any of it out loud, of course.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“listen, just. put away the guitar. that’s a good first step.” He leaned back, leaving a faint chill in his place.

That was a non-answer if Declan had ever heard one, but he wasn’t about to say no. This had all happened before, with the  _ first  _ commitment-allergic piece of shit he’d gotten inexplicably stuck on. The least he could do was put on a brave face about it this time. He picked up the guitar, standing as he did so, and dropped it in its case. He kicked it shut. 

When he turned back, Mike was standing by the corner of the bed. He had his jacket half-on already—denim, wildly impractical for a Chicago autumn. He’d frozen in that position: one arm in the air, opposite hand twisted in his lapel, gaze averted. “listen, i should probably be upfront about it.” 

“About what?”

“this isn’t—i’m not really as good at no-strings-attached stuff as you are.”

Declan’s eyes darted back at the notebook, still on the bed between them. “I wouldn’t say I’m that g—”

“let me finish, okay?”

Mike actually waited for a response. “Okay?”

“i’m not good with, like. indirect answers, or gray areas.” He paused for a moment. “anymore. and normally that’s fine, right, ‘cause you aren’t either and you’ve made it pretty clear that all you really want from me is like, a friends with benefits and ability to play bar chords situation? but i just want you to know that  _ i _ know you know i’m catching feelings about it, and. yeah. you’ve made that pretty clear! good, um, boundary setting. so. i’m gonna respect that. and i’m just gonna walk myself back to the hotel and try to convey to my team how much this is  _ not  _ a walk of shame?”

Mike finished putting his coat on. He grabbed his scarf off the bedpost.

“Dude, I was flirting back?”

There was a moment—one stupid, gorgeous moment—where Mike was left squinting at him, face cast in the dim hot pink light from Declan’s keyboard, scarf tossed halfheartedly over his shoulders. He was frozen again. Dumbstruck, Declan’s brain provided, but what did it know? What if that was the bad kind of squint? The I-was-just-trying-to-excuse-myself-from-this- situation kind of squint? Or, even worse, what if the feelings were, in fact, caught? And this was the  _ other _ kind of—

“well, that’s a relief. teddy was never going to believe me.”

“What?”

“teddy, theo, uh, my team captain. duende. i mean—” Mike dug his hands into his hair, pushing it out of his face. “can i start over? this is like thinking about sex in church. the cognitive dissonance is killing me.

“Sure.” Declan took a few tentative steps around the corner of the bed. “Say what you got to say.”

He dropped his hands to his sides. “listen, i just want to know before i do anything else. before, uh. well. is this something you want to be like—a  _ thing  _ thing?”

“A thing thing?”

“you know. it’s been a thing, but.” Mike closed the last few steps, face only inches from Declan’s. “kissing at parties is one thing. flirting—flirting  _ back _ —is a whole other thing. a  _ thing  _ thing.”

“Then I guess I do want a thing-thing.” 

“you’re not saying it right.”

“I don’t really care?”

“i just want to know if you mean it, asshole.”

“I don’t say shit I don’t mean, unlike some people.”

“yeah, and yet you wonder why people can’t stand you.” 

“Why do you even talk to me? It’s not like I plan to get any better.”

“dunno. maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part.”

They’d kissed before. This wasn’t—it shouldn’t feel new, not by any means. It didn’t have the right. But the kisses before had been drunk and loud, or hungover and quiet and bent over a guitar. Each of them holding a kind of bittersweetness, some caveat or history left unsaid.

This was something else. It started with Mike’s hand in his collar, and then Mike’s other hand in his hair, and then an awful, wrenching  _ lightness  _ in his chest. His hands found their way to Mike’s waist, the gesture half-automatic from those other times just like this and half a desperate bid to weigh himself down. Desperate—shit, he probably looked desperate as hell right now, didn’t he? There he was all  _ pressing Mike close,  _ close enough to feel his heartbeat through his ribs again. He should step back. Let go. Give the guy a chance to realize what a mistake he was making.

What was hard to face was that he didn’t actually want to.

Instead, Declan leaned in harder, sliding his hands under Mike’s jacket and coaxing some quiet noise from the back of his throat. He didn’t—he’d think about how he felt about that later. Mike spread his hand across Declan’s collarbone in reply, his fingertips brushing against bare skin, sending a chill up his spine and maybe he should have been thinking just a little harder because his breath hitched and his balance faltered and he fell back onto the bed, taking Mike down with him.

“Fuck! Shit, I’m  _ so  _ sorry, I just—”

“here, no, that was my fault, let me get—”

“I mean, you don’t have to—” Declan bit back however that sentence was going to end. “Sorry.”

Mike stared down at him, glasses askew from the rough landing. “gotta say, it’s a hell of an ego boost to make you go literally weak in the knees.”

“Like you need a bigger ego.” He started giggling and found it hard to stop long enough to finish the goof. “You’ve got—you asshole, you’ve got three songs about you already.”

“more, actually.”

“The ones you wrote don’t count.”

“we have other albums—”

“Shut up.” Declan grabbed Mike’s free hand—the one not occupied in his hair, the one he wasn’t trying  _ intensely  _ to ignore—and laced his fingers in Mike’s. “I was tired anyway.”

Mike kept looking at him. Declan did his best to put on an expression that didn’t imply anything he didn’t want to imply.

“I just mean, it’s late, and like you said—I know your team gets on your ass about that kind of thing—”

And then Mike was grinning, that bastard. “you want me to stay.”

“Yeah. Yeah, if you want to.” The words left his lips before he had time to put them back in his heart where they belonged. “You don’t have to.”

“no, i’m gonna.”

“I don’t have a spare toothbrush.”

Whatever new expression was on Mike’s face softened a little, crinkling at the edges, around the eyes. “i think my dental health will survive the night.”

“I don’t eat a very healthy breakfast. Like, I know you’re kind of a fruit guy—”

“you were the one kissing me—”

“You know what I mean.”

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to Declan’s forehead. “always do.”


End file.
